What is our reaction to condemnation or judgment of this sort?
Note the parallel to our own society. The gulf between the rich and the poor is increasing. North America's affluence is based upon paying subsistance wages in the two thirds world, allowing child labor, encouraging trade dependent economies and political instability. How would you react to the judgment that the whole system of capitalism should be obliterated?
Think about how North America reacted to the collapse of communist economies.
Section One - Rhetoric
1:1-2 Superscription
1:3-2:3 Oracles of Judgment against neighboring nations
1. Damascus (Aram/Syria)
2. Gaza (Philistia)
3. Tyre (Phoenicia)
4. Edom
5. Amonites
6. Moab
7. Judah
2:6-8 Oracle of Judgment against Israel
1. bribery of judges
2. selling innocent parties into slavery
3. oppressing the poor
4. pushing the afflicted out of the way
5. fathers and sons sharing one woman
6. confiscation of cloaks for debts contra Exod 22:25-26; Deut 24:17
7. drinking in God's house
2:9-11 What God has done for Israel is compared to what Israel has done for God
2:13-16 A nightmare vision of the future -- the reversal of the moral order produces a reversal of power.
Section Two
3:3-8 Seven rhetorical questions based on the law of causality leads the reader to concede to the eighth case.
3:9-12, 13-15; 4:1-3 Three Oracles
4"4-13 An ironic summons using seven imperative verbs.
5:1-7 Funeral Dirge
5:18-20 Polemic against the popular conception of victory and salvation as defeat of Israel's enemies
5:21-27 Polemic against popular reliance upon cultic practices
6:1-7, 8-11. 12-14 Oracles echo earlier motifs = summary conclusion
As rhetoric, does Amos 1-6 work? Does he succeed in persuading his audience? Hindsight tells us that the answer is no. Is Amos then preserved as a failed piece of rhetoric or is it a warning addressed to another audience? Is there another possibility? In contrast to the sins of the nations, how do the sins of Israel appear? Does their annihilation seem an appropriate punishment? Does an analysis of section three show that Amos may serve a dialogic purpose in which God rather than Israel is on trial?
7:1-9:11 Visions and Oracles (Auditions) of Judgment
Amos assumes position of defence attorney for the accused, Israel
God shows vision of locusts eating grass -- Amos pleads -- God relents
God shows vision of fire eating up the land -- Amos pleads -- God relents
God shows a vision of a wall built with a plumb line: (A) the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate (B) the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste (C) I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with a sword.
Rather than Amos objecting, Amos encounters the leaders of Israel who inadvertently change his mind: Amaziah tells Jeroboam that Amos has said that (C) Jeroboam shall die by the sword (B) Israel must go into Exile. He then commands Amos (B) do not prophesy against Israel (A) do not preach against Isaac.
Amos reponds that he is no prophet but a herdman, in short, stating that he does not stand to benefit from his oracles. He is now prepared to condemn Israel.
God shows vision of summer fruit -- Amos is silent
Amos sees a vison of the Lord standing beside the altar
9:12-15 Oracle of Restoration -- God will raise up the booth of David.
According to Stanley Fish, rhetoric affirms or mirrors the thoughts of the audience; dialectic calls for response from the audience and allows for changing thought patterns.
Bibliography:
Eslinger, Lyle. "The Education of Amos." Hebrew Annual Review 11 (1987): 35-57.